On Monday Mayor Bloomberg announced a lawsuit against the Poospatuck Indian reservation on Long Island, in an attempt to stop the untaxed sale of 11.3 million cartons of cigarettes on the reservation per year. Today the Times has a great, long article about how the smokes travel from the wholesaler through the reservation and to the streets of New York, where "$5 Men" like "Paco" stand on corners and whisper, "Newports. Loosies. Shorts. Longs." Reporters......

Starting today and running through Labor Day, Starbucks will be helping customers succumbing to afternoon drowsiness with a special discount. After 2 p.m., anyone who produces a receipt from a previous Starbucks purchase that morning can buy any iced grande beverage for $2. (Drinks like their grande iced latte typically costs about $4.) The new discount is part of an aggressive attempt by the faltering coffee giant – which is closing hundreds of locations and......

Restaurant Week, which was supposed to end after Friday night, has been turned into Restaurant Summer, with 130 restaurants extending their prix-fixe deals on weekdays all the way through Labor Day. The special three course menus – $24.07 for lunch and $35.00 for dinner – have proven extra-popular with recession minded diners this month, according to NYC & Company, which organizes the biannual deal. Restaurants participating in the Labor Day extension include such well-reviewed places......

A Brooklyn TKTS – the discount Broadway and Off-Broadway ticket booth – was recently unveiled at MetroTech Center in downtown Brooklyn at the corner of Jay Street and Myrtle Avenue. Though it won’t be open on weekends like the Manhattan TKTS locations, it will give Brooklyn playgoers the edge on weekdays, when it opens a full four hours ahead of the Times Square TKTS, which is currently operating at the Marriot Marquis while the new......

Police have rounded up 38 people accused of running a credit card fraud ring out of Queens for almost a decade. Officials say hackers in China and Ukraine have been breaking into the databases of major U.S. department stores, and then sending the credit card information of thousands of shoppers to the ringleader, Kwok Chow, 36, a Flushing resident known as “Tony.” The scam hit approximately 3,000 consumers and may have cost as much as......